The MTA Board approved a slate of fare and toll increases, raising $450 million per year for the cash-strapped agency even as board members called for more aid from city and state governments.

MTA Board Chairman Joe Lhota, who is resigning at the end of the year – not Friday, as originally reported – to mull a possible 2013 NYC mayoral run: “I get great joy in seeing a mistake in the papers.”

Greg David agrees Lhota has an uphill battle ahead of him if he runs for mayor as a Republican in the Democrat-dominated city, but insists “history shows it can be done.”

After Lhota resigns at the end of the year, former Bronx BP Freddy Ferrer will be the MTA’s interim chairman. He hopes he won’t be in that post for long.

The New York Times’ Albany bureau chief, Danny Hakim, is headed to London, where he’ll be Business Day’s European economic correspondent.

Bad for the budget: Tax collections through November of $39.2 billion were $163.4 million below the state’s estimates updated last month, $702.4 million below initial estimates in April, says Comptroller Tom DiNapoli.

Three State Department officials have resigned in the wake of a report on the attacks.

Ben Affleck, who has been floated as a possible replacement for Sen. John Kerry if he becomes secretary of state, met with Kerry today during visit to Capitol Hill.

Affleck was in Washington to raise awareness about the violence plaguing Congo, and declined to address any talk of his political ambitions.

New York’s unemployment rate was 8.7 in October, ranking it 41st of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Sen. Liz Krueger is having trouble finding affordable office space in her Upper East Side district after the GOP leadership reduced her annual budget.

TIME’s Joe Klein bestows a ”Teddy” award for “political courage” on Cuomo, writing that he has “provided real leadership under pressure – not just after the storm but also in taking on his fellow Democrats in Albany, who are among the most troglodytic and reactionary hacks festering in any state legislature in the country.”

Onondaga County Legislature Chairman Ryan McMahon, a Republican, is thinking about running for mayor of Syracuse next year. The current mayor, Democrat Stephanie Miner, hasn’t yet announced whether she’ll seek re-election.

AG Eric Schneiderman says over 2,100 additional accounts of registered sex offenders have been purged from online gaming platforms as part of “Operation: Game Over.”

The NYC Districting Commission has a new public hearing schedule after scrapping its original plan due to controversy over Assemblyman Vito Lopez’s district.

Robert Bork, whose failed nomination to the US Supreme Court sparked one of the most contentious appointment battles in American history and helped inspire the conservative legal movement, died at the age of 85.